


starving mouths, silently screaming

by eraserheadbaby



Category: Tales of Series, Tales of Xillia
Genre: Bad Ending, Codependency, M/M, Sibling Incest, more like best ending in any tales game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23688925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eraserheadbaby/pseuds/eraserheadbaby
Summary: He admits it, and admits it loud and clear:Ludger looks beautiful with blood on his face.
Relationships: Julius Will Kresnik/Ludger Will Kresnik
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	starving mouths, silently screaming

He has secured the best position to monitor his target: one small window high up on the furthermost wall, with a view that stretches narrowly all along the miniscule house.

In another place and time, there would be no target. Everyone Julius saw would already be bleeding on the ground. But now there's someone waiting for him at home, and well, the truth is all the people in this dimension have that to thank for their few more minutes of life.

The target is preparing to leave his home, and Julius has already strategized the most efficient way to follow him unnoticed and attack as soon as possible. Just before opening the front door, the target turns to say goodbye to another person, a young boy, not much older than- 

A lock clicks open, and it's time to start the hunt.

Julius only needs to tail the target until he gets outside the town and into its outskirts. Behind his hiding spot, his feet accelerate before he can really follow them, and his blade meets the back of his victim-

The victim that turns around, and Julius sees himself staring back at him.

The knife digs a bit deeper than needed on the wound. The fallen world leaves behind nothing but shards. Julius wants to go home, where someone is waiting for him.

*

He is finally home, where his brother is waiting for him over the stove. Ludger is still wearing his apron, leaving Julius with his feelings once again cannibalizing each other – his guilt for all Ludger does for him, the longing for even more.

His mind's gale reignites his body's fiery pain, and his knees give out. He spends a muddled moment kneeling on the floor, vaguely aware of a worried calling of his name and nervous footsteps, until his head is wrapped around delicate arms and brought onto a soft inhaling chest.

Love spumes inside him, and Julius can't stop thinking of ways to let it all out. The more they crop up, the more they warp into something visceral and possessive ; although he can tame it, it's not enough to make him resist hauling his brother even closer to him.

Rollo meows in a high pitch, as if asking Julius what the hell he is doing. He always knew that cat is much more mature, much more selfless, than he ever was.

*

He often finds himself reminiscing about specific moments of the past – all the times he tried to convince Ludger to talk to more people, find more friends, yet conveniently found something wrong with all the few faces that would rarely come up. All the sighs of relief he covertly let out, when Ludger stayed home with him for yet another night. The rueful satisfaction he felt when, after asking Ludger if he wanted to go out instead, he'd only get a cute docile murmur that he just wanted to stay with Julius.

By all means, these are the failings of an inadequate caregiver. Instead, Julius recalls them as the desperate tries of a child – a child that grew up taking care of another child – to keep for himself the only person close to him.

But the story goes on, all the way: Ludger still spends his nights over a stove, cooking for his brother, or waiting for him to come home, enough for sleep to overtake him after a point. Dishearteningly quiet with other people, he only offers painless typical words, until he transforms into a whole different person once he crosses their threshold, the innocent young man full of grins, laughs and sass.

And here's where the downward slope truly begins. Because he can't help admiring those moments like a crystalline collection, like the appetizing fruits of an unintentional labor. They make him happy. Sinfully, painfully happy.

*

The tip of the pen clogs on the paper quite a few times, and the ink smears the corners of many words. It's only those smudges that Julius can make out, because none of the words connect neither with his mind nor with his heart, but he still knows them to be right.

Besides, none of this was ever about him.

With stinging relief, he realizes he can at least parry his selfishness enough to finally put the letter down and leave the house where no one would be waiting for him anymore.

*

The last body hits the ground, and maybe he can think of it as an empty sack, maybe he can think of the red oozing from it as tomato sauce. Such childish notions, these thoughts are an unfitting cogwheel for a killing machine.

Sullen light from above covers Ludger's blades, and the blood on them turns into a tarry black, and Julius' blades often look the same, but these are Ludger's blades, and staining those blades is all Julius tried to avoid, and this terrifying, this is irreversible, this is- 

This is alright.

Ludger has just become a murderer, has thrashed everything both he and Julius ever worked so hard for, but Ludger just killed for him, Ludger held him as pain razed his body, Ludger wanted for them to end their foredoomed lives together, and it's alright.

Under a falling purple sky, on asphalt that's been blemished with red, in a decaying body that's ticking away his time, Julius has nowhere to hide, can't hide from himself.

He admits it, and admits it loud and clear:

Ludger looks beautiful with blood on his face.

Rollo raises no objection to the twisted scene, and Julius takes that as a form of affirmation.

So he gets his fill from Ludger's embrace. Their coupled heartbeats set the chorus for the birth and death of a new world, a crumbling world that can hold them and only them, the selfish world that Julius always wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> julius will kresnik the tales verse patron saint of brocon


End file.
